He undressed me with steady hands. My shirt first—pulled over my head with care, his fingers grazing my breasts on the way up, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. Then his own, and God, the sight of him—all that lean, corded muscle I’d watched from the porch, close enough to touch now, close enough to press my mouth to. I did. I leaned up and kissed the center of his chest, and his breath hitched, a sharp intake through his nose that made his whole body tense.
The rest of our clothes followed, every barrier stripped away until there was nothing left between us but skin and the thick, electric charge of wanting.
He settled between my thighs—the hard, heavy length of him pressing against me where I already ached. He didn’t push in. Not yet. Instead, he rocked his hips, slow and deliberate, dragging himself through the slick heat, coating himself in my arousal while his eyes stayed locked on my face. Watching. Studying.
“Tell me you want this,” he said quietly. His forehead pressed to mine, breath mingling with breath, and the question wasn’t about permission—he already had that. It was about hearing me say it. About needing the words as much as the act.
“I want you.” My voice came out steady and sure, because I had never meant anything more. “Always.”
Something changed in his expression. A chink in the armor, a flash of vulnerability that he let me see for exactly one second before he kissed me again and pushed inside.
My body opened for him, stretched around him. I gripped his shoulders, nails pressing half-moons into his skin, and he paused, giving me time, reading my body with an attentiveness that made my eyes sting.
When he bottomed out, hips flush against mine, we both groaned—the sound raw and honest and tangled together in the quiet room. He held there. Buried deep. Letting me adjust, letting me register every inch, every pulse, every throb of him inside me. His hands moved—roaming my sides, cupping my breasts, tracing the dip of my waist, the flare of my hips—touching me like he couldn’t stop, like he’d been starving for this specific contact and now that he had it, he intended to be thorough about it.
He started to move, deep, rolling thrusts that dragged against every sensitive spot and pulled sounds from me I had no control over. Not frantic. Not rough. Just relentless and deliberate, each stroke a full withdrawal and a slow, devastating return that left me gasping. He set a rhythm that owned me—unhurried.
I wrapped my legs around his waist. Heels dug into his lower back, urging him deeper, and he answered—hips thrusting a little harder now, finding an angle that lit up something white-hot behind my eyes. But still controlled. Still measured. Every movement designed with precision, with purpose, and the purpose was to unravel me completely.
One hand tangled in my hair, not pulling, just anchoring me close so he could swallow every gasp, every whimper, every broken version of his name. The other slipped betweenour bodies, his thumb finding my clit and circling with firm, steady pressure that synced perfectly with the rhythm of his hips.
“God, Sloane.” The words scraped out of him, raw and wrecked against my mouth. “You’re so fucking perfect. Like you were made to take me. Like you were made for me.”
The praise hit harder than any roughness ever could.
The coil in my belly wound tighter. Tighter. My hips rocked up to meet his rhythm, fracturing, nails raking down his back hard enough to leave marks. He shuddered—a full-body tremor that rippled through him and translated into a thrust so deep I saw sparks—and drove harder in response, thumb pressing, hips grinding, giving me everything.
“Come for me, baby.” His voice dropped to a whisper, thick and strained, barely holding together. “Let me have it.”
I broke.
The orgasm crashed through me with a violence that stole my voice for a full second before it came back in a cry—“Callan”—torn out of me, echoing off the cabin walls. My walls clenched around him, thighs shaking, fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to bruise.
His control shattered seconds after mine. His thrusts turned erratic, desperate, hips stuttering as he buried himself to the hilt and came with a low, guttural groan that vibrated through both of us. I held him through it, legs locked around him, hands in his hair, pulling him closer as I absorbed the hot, pulsing rush of him emptying inside me. The warmth spread and spilled where our bodies joined, slick and obscene and intimate in a way that made my throat tighten.
He didn’t pull out.
Instead, he lowered himself carefully—shifting his weightso he didn’t crush me but keeping us connected—and wrapped his arms around me. One smooth roll and I lay draped across his chest, legs tangled, skin cooling in the night air. His heartbeat thundered under my ear, strong and rapid, gradually slowing. One hand stroked down my back in a long, soothing movement. The other cradled the back of my head, fingers threaded loosely through my hair.
I pressed my lips to the hollow of his throat. Tasted salt. Tasted him.
The silence held us for a long, perfect moment.
“I love you, Callan.”
He went still beneath me. The hand on my back paused mid-stroke. His heartbeat, which had been steadily calming, kicked up again under my ear.
One second. Two.
Then a sound rumbled through his chest—low and warm, almost disbelieving, like a man hearing something he’d stopped expecting to hear a long time ago. His fingers tightened gently in my hair, tilting my face up so he could see me.
I let him look. No walls. No armor. Just me—flushed and wrecked and more honest than I’d ever been in my life.
“I already knew,” he said.
His voice came out low and tender, stripped of every sharp edge I’d ever associated with it. And his eyes—God, his eyes.
He brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. Slowly. As if time no longer existed.